Virginia Beach City Public Schools

Three Oaks students get some pretty famous pen pals

It’s not every day that you receive a personal correspondence with some of the literary world’s leading contributors.

However, students in Edwards Gibbs’s fifth-grade class at Three Oaks Elementary School have just that.

Students in the class wrote letters to authors of some of their favorite books. Astoundingly, several wrote back. Patrick Skene Catling, a 98 year old British author of The Chocolate Touch, who lives in Ireland, J.K.Rowling, Jerry Spinelli, Kate DiCamillo, and Valerie Tripp all sent responses back to the students who wrote them.

Dimitri McHenry who received a hand-written letter from British author Patrick Skene Catling. Catling wrote The Chocolate Touch and will be 99 years old in February.

Tripp, who is the author of the American Girl series, actually wrote two letters to one student who continued to write the author back.

This is not the first time Gibbs has taken this kind of activity. In years past, he also has had students write to political figures for specific causes, but took a different approach this year in letting students select an author.